San Diego’s commercial real estate market may be stuck in first gear as the economy hobbles toward recovery, but that’s not true of one segment: medical office buildings.

For perhaps the first time in history, 2012 saw more medical space than regular office space added locally — 587,000 square feet compared with 3,887 square feet — according to Colliers International.

That’s in the context of 112.7 million square feet of all office space in the county with roughly 10 percent or 13.6 million square feet labeled as medically related.

And here’s another surprise: The new spaces don’t resemble your family physician’s lairs of old.

No stark white walls and narrow hallways, windowless examination rooms and plastic tulips in coffee cans. You’ll find the Beatles or pastoral pictures on the walls.

The rise in medical offices owes itself to three basic factors that appeal to developers. Medicine pays higher rental rates, commits to longer term leases and fills up buildings faster, yielding less vacancy over time.

Colliers and Cushman & Wakefield brokerage facts bear this out.

The overall vacancy rate for all medical offices stands at 11.9 percent, while nonmedical is nearly three points higher at 14.4 percent. Medical pays an average $2.82 per square foot per month, nonmedical $2.12 or 25 percent less.

“You certainly get a higher premium on medical, but you’re also including a premium allowance as well,” said Cushman’s medical office specialist, Travis Ives.

Growth pattern plays out

Paul Braun, who’s been doing deals on medical office buildings for nearly 20 years at Colliers, said the specialty has grown as doctors and medical groups moved away from hospital campuses and sought highly visible and accessible locations. His colleague, Chris Ross, said the pace may quicken as the federal Affordable Care Act brings more people under the umbrella of health insurance programs.

“The bottom line is medical groups and health systems are in a growth pattern and they tend to put multi-specialty, full-service clinics with ancillary services all under one roof, and so they will naturally lease a whole floor or a whole building,” Ross said.

Developer Charlie Abdi, a former Koll Co. executive who started Finest City Realty Advisors in 2003, saw a niche waiting to fill and had a family heritage to uphold.

“Both my parents were physicians, and there just weren’t a lot of medical buildings built in the 1990s, and there were a lot of rooftops being built,” Abdi said.

Inspired by Grand Del Mar

His latest project, co-developed with John White, is 4S Health Center on Camino del Norte, a $12.5 million, 40,398-square-foot building in the 4S master-planned community west of Rancho Bernardo.

Except for the caduceus — the Greek staff of intertwining snakes symbolizing medicine — that’s engraved above the entrance, you wouldn’t know this was a place to get your cavities filled, your cancer zapped or your kids inoculated.